Apri1 15, 2008

By JOE BAGEANT

There seems to be no end to the media mediocrity we must suffer in this country. Now we have the Obama Guns, God and Bitterness shit storm, with the shit pouring forth from the same media scuppers (scuppers are outlet sewage blowholes on the sides of ships) as usual: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, the Associated Press, Fox News, Reuters, Politico, the Lou Dobbs Show, Hardball, Olbermann's Countdown, The Atlantic.com, The DailyKos, TalkingPointsMemo

And all because Obama mentioned something we've known for at least a couple of decades now: That the government has been fucking over the nation's heartland towns and the "little guy" Americans inhabiting them.

To quote Obama:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. ... And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."

So what the hell else is new?

Then Obama adds:

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

While not precisely correct, it's a good enough generalization for an American audience not really listening anyway. Obama's remarks were not in the least controversial and just plain boring in terms of content. Certainly not newsworthy.

Yet he had no sooner closed his mouth than this media manufactured hell broke loose. "Oh my gawd," they screamed. This guy has the unmitigated gall to suggest that their might be some bitterness out here in the lily white realms of Grant Wood, grange halls and Methodist church suppers! Right here in River City!" where the combination of God rhetoric and Chamber of Commerce boosterism have managed to ban the word from public discourse. Even the mention of it can be explosive, simply because there is so much if it stuffed inside working folks, inside the lockbox of denial that comes with being the citizen of a culture in collapse.

Put more simply, the self-serving "blogger-reporters" and Hillary Clinton media machine had managed to kick Obama in the balls from behind.

Along with the bitterness charges came the guns and God stuff. Well, we Red State rubes out here in the working world do own a lot of guns, though very few of us "cling" to them in the desperate sense the speech implied. As to what Obama described as our clinging to religion, we do not so much cling to it as it clings to us as a vestige of our heritage. It's neither a good nor bad thing in and of itself, but mighty damned useful to fear mongering politicians and the screen writers of television crime shows. Hell, even I made a few bucks writing about its nastier side in my book Deer Hunting With Jesus.

For me, listening to politicians talk, then listening to the media talk about politicians talking, rates right up there with swapping spit with a gingivitis victim. I do not like nor trust nor much listen to Hillary, McCain or Obama. And I wouldn't vote for any of the three even if they knocked on my door bearing a bucket of smoked pork ribs and a bottle of Jack Daniels. However, after hearing Obama's March "race speech," in Philadelphia, I can understand the Obama cult a little better. Although his speech was full of national clichés and meaningless soaring rhetoric, somehow it was still a goddamned good one, and right on in my opinion. Maybe I liked it because, like the poverty victim he brought forth in typical Democratic Pity Party fashion, I too have eaten mustard and relish sandwiches growing up (or when lacking those condiments, plain sugar on white bread.) I loved the speech. But I still ain't drinking the Kool-Aid.

In any case, Obama has proven you cannot even use the innocuous word bitterness in conjunction with the national lie of white American culture. In the officially sanctioned media lexicon, Blacks can be angry, disillusioned and even bitter enough to burn down Watts. But the white race, being blessed by a Christian god and divine providence, never harbor bitterness in their hearts. The reason the word bitterness has caused such horror is because what is really going on out there is the sprouting seeds of class animosity. And no candidate or pontificating media mugwump dares touch that one because they are in the class that benefits from our classist society.

I'm from Winchester, Virginia, the very kind of place and people Obama was talking about when the rotten tomatoes started hailing down. So allow me to say this: we white members of the sweating class have been working alongside laboring immigrants, legal and illegal, for decades and have not been killing them with our personal arms in a rage of antipathy, in so far as I know. The reason, near as I can tell, is that we do not give a happy shit one way or another because most of us do not have interest or knowledge enough to fester on the topic. Nor the time. When we fester on stuff, it's about making car payments and trying not to default on our mortgages. Working two and sometimes three jobs per household does not leave much time to develop political opinions, much less informed ones. I'd be willing to bet there is not a working class person within four blocks of where I now sit who has even heard of this media manufactured Obama fracas. Yesterday Smokey, the apartment maintenance man next door, helped me haul a dead washing machine to the city dump. I asked him what he thought about the Obama thing.

"Huh?" he said.

He spoke for millions.

Nobody out here that I know particularly "hates niggers", blames Mexicans or is willing to use their personal firearms against any of those people, unless they find one of them crack crazed and coming in through a bedroom window at 2 AM, in which case there will be a loud boom, and the perp is gonna look like a pizza splattered up against the wall. Otherwise we just stand before the incompressible system that fucks us blind. And in that there is certain bitterness.

Let's get to the nub of this thing here: Obama, Hillary and McCain are farting through silk while playing out their roles in our theatrical state's false drama called presidential elections, while smug and media sanctioned pundits snark from the edge of the proscenium arc of politics, each hoping to draw enough attention to have his or her own proscenium in that national cathedral of the American consciousness -- television.

Before too long this earth shaking "incident" will be drowned out by the accumulating noise of the election year. Then even the election's hoopla will all be wiped away when Oprah Winfrey, in one of her ever grander spectacles of televised largess, gives away the city of Detroit to the sixth grade author of the most heart rending essay on black poverty.

November is still seven months away. No normal person can stand, much less relish, seven more months of all this. But we will wallow in it all for the same reason a hog spends most of its life knee deep in shit. It has no other choice, it has plenty of company, and doesn't know any other way of life.

One of these days, when it comes to the thundering non-controversy of Obama's remarks, the blogosphere and the media may start asking the right kinds of questions. The kind Smokey asked me after I explained the Obama controversy to him:

"Who the fuck cares?"

Joe Bageant is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, from Random House/Crown about working class America. Bageant is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, forthcoming this spring from AK Press. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com.

"who the fuck cares"

Actually, you're wrong. Some people were offended. They aren't offended at being called "bitter" either, although that's the media talking point.

What is really going on here then? Why all the fuss? I'll tell you why.

"Xenophic" is just a polite euphimism for "racist." And poor small-town white people don't want to get constantly lectured by a rich, elitist black man about how racist they are.

That's about it. No-one in the media wants to admit it, but this the real issue here. There is a racial double-standard as far as what you are allowed to say, and many people are tired of it, especially those who are themselves poor.

If you can judge from some discussion boards (a dubious sampling, I know), the man on the street does think illegal aliens are responsible for his problems. It is one of the boogiemen du jour, along with the dreaded gay agenda, and of course, liberals.

I don't know, maybe they're just internet trolls, but somebody is making a lot of noise along these lines.

As far as bitterness, I don't think many would seriously argue with the assertion that we are bitter. We've just been through nearly eight years of Bush and friends practicing their love on us.

Here is the sad fact of the matter, though. Obama never used the words "xenophobic" or "racist." These are words put in his mouth.

Additionally, if you actually listened to Obama's words, you would see that the first thing he states is that racism is not the motivating factor:

The people are mis-appre…they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it.

"Obama never used the words "xenophobic" or "racist." These are words put in his mouth."

Well here are the words that came out of his mouth:

"...antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment..."

I'm sure it must just be that I'm not smart enough to actually understand what he meant-- right?

First, you would be hard pressed to prove that there is not widespread anti-immigrant sentiment right now.

Secondly, he said antipathy "to people who aren't like them." This certainly could be race or nationality, but it could also mean gender, it could also mean socio-economic status, it could also be purely demographic (e.g. rural versus urban or suburban).

Once again, you will be hard pressed to disprove this. His statement was quite simple, yet completely blown out of proportion.

Individuals that have had hard economic times manifest their sentiments in numerous ways: some turn to religion; others become highly cynical of government; others may scapegoat others and blame immigrants; others may become antagonistic to individuals that have not shared the same life experiences as them; and, finally, others may be a combination of these things.

Now, go back and look at the entire context of his statement rather than you little excerpt:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

What is even more interesting is the parts that the media have willfully omitted in this contrived controversy.

At the same rally, Obama addressed black, urban youth that feel irrelevant in the global economy and turn to destructive behavior. Where is the outrage at that statement?

What a bunch of fucking hypocrites these jackass pundits are and shame on each and everyone of you that are trying to make the statement something that it was not just to score political points. Shame!

Let me tell you something else,wolf05827. I live in Oklahoma and I have certainly visited my share of downtrodden rural communites.

I can assure you there are four things that are certainly not in short supply: religion, guns, anti-immigrant sentiment (except in agriculture areas where cheap labor is sought), and antipathy to outsiders.

Oklahoma just passed one of the stricted anti-immigration laws in the country (go look up Oklahoma House Bill 1804).

At the same time, there is outrage about a "NAFTA corridor" in Oklahoma and a great deal of opposition to so-called free trade.

Obama's comments were spot on. It is truly disgusting to see people seize on these comments as if they were something offensive rather than the actual truth.

So you first you tell us that wasn't really what he said, then it wasn't what he meant, then that it was what he meant and he was right to explain all those guns and all that God and all that other stuff as being the result of the poor rubes' suffering-- painting religious practice and firearms ownership with the same brush as racism and xenophobia and boiling a complex social history down to a stereotype that fits neatly into a fundraising speech.

I'm so sorry to hear you have to live among the downtrodden ignorant Okie savages... I guess on the upside you have access to "the actual truth" to comfort you.

Of course, I said absolutely none of this. At best, this is a poor reading of what I wrote. At worst, it is an outright distortion.

Shall I repeat my interpretation of Obama's words?

Obama was asked about campaigning to a particular demographic. He replied that many individuals in former manufacturing states are cynical about government because, despite promises from successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican alike, these individuals plights have been ignored. It is therefore not surprising that these individuals distrust politicians that make certain promises and, instead, focus their attentions on other things, whether it is religion, guns, anti-immigrants sentiments, or whatever.

The fact of the matter was he was not calling these individuals xenophobic or racist, as you and others have claimed.

Poll after poll shows that things, such as anti-immigration sentiments are among the top concern of a majority of Americans.

Are you calling the majority of Americans xenophobic and racist, Wolf05827? Or do you recognize, as Obama did, that some of these sentiments are borne out of economic hard times and the perception (i.e. scapegoating) that immigration is a serious issue?

As I said, Obama's assessment is spot on. Many individuals are frustrated with government inaction and this frustration as bred cynicism. Additionally, it has manifested itself in individuals voting on wedge issues, such as religion, guns, free trade, and/or immigration.

The point is, to note that this is the case is not the same thing as saying these individuals are racist or xenophobic. These individuals have serious concerns and they manifest it in various ways.

Maybe one day you will pull your head out of your ass long enough to come talk to some of the Okies of whom I speak and you will see that guns, God, religion, anti-immigration sentiments, and opposition to free trade are common place in these parts. You will also learn that these individuals, by-in-large, are not bigots or ignorant savages, rather individuals in economic stress.